


The Days Went By

by lisabounce



Category: Provost's Dog - Tamora Pierce
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:36:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisabounce/pseuds/lisabounce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Twer his hands that did it, though not by his choice. He's a lifetime of doing ahead of him now, to make up for what's been done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Days Went By

He woke in the care of the healers of the Lord Provost. His hand, with its spot, burned and he could feel nothing in his legs. He'd have been afraid if he could but his fear had been burned out in recent days

The healer-mage's assistant was a hard mot, who grabbed him by his shoulders and dragged him half upright to drink some foul potion, before letting go, letting him fall back onto the pallet he lay on. He couldn't reach the rough wool blanket and shivered that night. Eventually they came and eased him, removed the pot and dumped a tray of gruel and black bread beside him. He ate and slept.

He ate, slept, ate again and at length was forced awake to swallow more potions. These men and women who came to him were no longer Dog healer-mages but rather the Palace ones, cold men and women who sent fire running through his legs, his back, leaving him burning and shaking for hours. Eventually, it would ease enough that he could scoop fingers of porridge into his mouth and sleep.

He prayed, the Hurdik prayers of those already damned when he was awake. He no longer had his charms and medallions but the damned need hardly fear a sorcerer, the bloody flux or spidrens, the chaos daemons and stormwings. He felt naked without the charms for family, hearth and home, borne out of the hills when he left so many years ago, three hairs from each of his sisters, his father and mother, his granduncle and his two sister sons braided into a smooth cord, tied into knots and bound against a leather backing. No Hillman without that proof of home and kin, but no Hillman would do as he had done, either, no matter the enmity they held toward the folk in the lowlands.

They did not heal him out of mercy. He knew that, as he lay vomiting from the after effects of the latest healing, shaking and drained. His legs burned and he was afraid to look, to see the scars that the flames these mages ran through them each day had surely left.

 

“I took a bribe. I had no---”

“Who else was allied with you? Who gave you your orders?”

“I don't know, my Lord.” It was the wrong answer and he screamed, long and loud, as they wound the screws tighter. Heal his legs, bind his fingers in the press. A damned man must walk to execution but did not need his hands.

“Did you attempt to call attention to the Prince's state as a slave?”

“No, my Lord. We thought that--”

The questions continued. Did you. Did you. Did you.... and never a chance to explain, to mention the spot on his hand that burned against his skin in the night and always, the pain should he answer wrongly.

He tried, he tried to give them the answers they wanted, so that they wouldn't hurt him. He changed his story, wandered back and forward as they carried him in each day, hoping only to keep them from hurting him more. The healer-mages would not let them take a stick to his legs, not after that first day. They had shouted, calling the cage Dogs curst fools who wasted another cove's work. It was a small mercy.

He wanted to take the Black God's option, managed one day to smash his drinking cup. The cuts were not over deep but they were long.

The healer-mage found him and bore him back from the God's grasp. He cursed the man, cursed his father, his sons and daughters that they would throw barren seed, that his crops would rot in his family's fields and that his name would never be remembered in the prayers of his family as the man boxed his ears and bound the wounds.

They took the cup with them after that, never left it unattended with him.

 

“Why did you do it?”

He had been caught in the very act of treason and yet they asked him why.

“Because of the spot, my Lords. The spot on my hand.” They beat him again, took the stick to his legs though the healer-mage had asked that they did not.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because there is a spot on my hand and it made me. It made me.” Snot and tears streamed down his face. “It made me,” he whispered, even he heard the rumble of conversation just past the edge of hearing. “It made me.”

A tall man and woman appeared in his vision, yellow robed mages from the City of the Gods. One grabbed his hands while the other drew a mirror from a pocket. He began the litany that protected against mages as they turned his hands this way and that, heedless of the pain it caused him.

They stripped Farmer Cape in front of him when they brought the mage in, removing all of the tokens of his power and bound him about in red and green and white thread before they began their questions.

He'd intended to remain awake, to watch and ward off any further enchantment.

He woke in a bed, soft sheets against his skin, hands bandaged and legs splinted. Gentle hands raised him up, held a mug of tea to his lips. He could taste the magic in it. He no longer cared. Servants brought in a sedan chair, bore him into it and into a bathing room. Even the joys of cleanliness and bright sunlight that covered his bed scarce penetrated his haze. He slept again, long and soundly and when he awoke, his hands were no longer bandaged. The spot no longer burned on them.

 

A wise-woman sat by his bed, braziers lit and the incense smelling like home. She chanted, tapping a beat on her drum, charms tied to his hands, his arms and painted onto his chest. It had been a very long time. He was the shamed, exiled son and had never called on the wise-womem in Corus. Such things were no longer his right, just as the names of the exiled were never called in the family prayers on the holy days.

There was tea, soft bread and soup. Here at last, in this room with its fresh rushes on the floor, its soft bed and whitewashed floor, there was a sense of time passing. The healer-mages still came day by day, leaving him screaming sand sweating. That at least had not changed.

 

Clary came to collect him. “You stupid scut,” she says and doesn't hit him like she might have as they bundle him into the donkey cart. “You curst stupid scut.”

They've made up a pallet for him, downstairs. Clary retreats upstairs as soon as they've arrived and he's settled on the pallet. She's gone to the Watch house when he wakes. Tomlan is good company, a wealth of gossip and they share a mug of ale.

It's not his home.

“You can't just lie about,” Tomlan says, a day or two later. He can too. Crutches aside, he's not much good at walking yet. “I brung my lads down, from the shop, with the handcart. You'll make a piss poor Dog as now, but I warrant I can make a carpenter of youn.”

And with that, Mattes found himself levering himself onto his crutches and hobbling to the door. He all but falls into the donkey cart the two 'prentices are pulling and they set off at a bone jarring trot. Tomlan dumps dowell rods, files and a saw at a table in front of him in the shop. “Buttons, my friend.”

It's 'prentice work and the other making buttons is a slip of a gixie barely ten years old who works a spell and then talks before working another spell. He's in an agony of anticipation watching her, but she's not chopped her fingers off by nuncheon and Mattes supposes that she does know what she's doing. At least with buttons.

And after that it's buttons, then beads and then, once Tomlan gives him a lump of pine, the rudiments of fancy carving. The days pass. He's still no good on his legs, can't walk more than across a room nor the shop.

 

“It don't matter.”

“What?”

“It don't much matter that you can't walk worth a damn. The money's in the fine work. See, here, you cut yon flower too deep. It's delicate.”

“You don't even know what flower that is,” Mattes protested.

“Aye. Tis a lady-like piece.”

“A rose, you mean.”

“Sommat like that, aye. We'll try you on decorating the lids to yon finework boxes tomorrer.”

 

They stood (sat, in the damned donkey cart) beside Beka when Master Farmer went to the gallows. The gixie didn't cry and didn't look away from her man. Two, now, she'd buried. Tomlan and Clary have a low-voiced conversation before Clary placed a hand on Beka's shoulder and headed to the Dove with her, while he went home with Tomlan.

 

He dreamed about the room below the lockup, the Ferrets and the cage Dogs, beating at his legs with sticks that night, and for the week after.

 

Tomlan just gave him more carving to work on in the days and he used his first wages to buy rose seedlings, pots and soil. A week later, Mattes moves into rooms across the road from Tomlan's shop. He can manage that distance. He's not avoiding Clary, avoiding all his past life, no matter how it seems. He pays a neighbour gixie to do his marketing.

 

His lady Sabine never comes acalling. Mattes can't bring himself to call on her.

 

It was his hands as killed that lad. His mouth as spoke words of treason. (His uncles, brothers and father as would sing his praises for that, for no friend of the damn scummer sucking folk of the lowlands they were. And then they would cast him out, damn his soul for the actions of his hands.)

 

Aniki and Kora came calling by his rooms one night, bearing ale and bread, sausage and cheese. Mattes spreads a rug on the floor and levers himself down to sit on a cushion. “Well met.”

Aniki nodded while Kora said “Aye. Here, man, have some ale,” and passed him a freshly filled jack. “Did you hear, about the cove as tried to challenge Rosto the other day?”

Aniki chuckled. “The lad thought that he might come into the Dove, all kitted out in some knight's stolen armour and the looby had stolen it – the greaves was tied on and the arms on t' breastplate and gauntlets were of Kingsgrove and Waymeet and Lockheath. Not a one was matching. He had a great sword and was swinging about when Rosto kicked his feet out from under him and cut the curst looby's armour off.” The two related further gossip from the Rogue.

“How is Beka taking it? She loved Farmer.” Mattes asked, finally.

“I got the last of his charms off a couple of days ago. She was bound in them, wrapped, over and over. If he wasn't already executed...” Klara said. Mattes made to spit and thought better of it. T'were his rooms.

 

He dreamed of the spot, burning into his hand.

 

It was spring before Beka came by. He still couldn't walk near far enough to make it to her half of the lower city and, carved fancy work aside, these were 'prentice wages, no matter what he was earning from the flowers he grew of evenings. They didn't stretch to handcarts nor yet, sedan chairs. Mattes pours the twilsey, sitting awkwardly on the bed, legs propped up on pillows, the chair left for Beka. She placed a napkin-wrapped bundle of apple patties, one of which she promptly handed to Achoo.

It had been court day and Mattes remembered the exhaustion after court only too well. “I've a half a chicken pie and a platter of dumplings in the cool box.” He started to struggle to his feet, reaching for the crutches when Beka stood and fetched them, spreading a cloth to take the food. “I could have gotten those.”

“I know.” Beka glared, eyes like chips of ice.

“I'll not have you treat me like a cripple.”

“I'm not after that, you curst looby. I was closer. Court's an easy day.”

Mattes snorted. “Aye, and your bum winds up frozen in the shape of the damn benches.”

Beka smiled at that and took a patty, biting into it and passed another to Achoo.

 

She came by the following week and the one after that. Mattes made sure to send the girl as did his marketing for a decent spread on court days.

“I trusted him, Tunstall. I trusted him, and the curst, scummer eating mage put his magics on me. Kora cleaned them off.” She began to cry, small, broken sobs, chocking them down. These were the tears he and Clary had never seen when Holborn was killed. Achoo nuzzled at Beka's hand while Tunstall scooted himself across the bed to wrap his arm around her shoulders. “He put his magics on me without my consent. I don't know that I'd have cared about him, if he hadn't.”

“I know. I know.”

He dreamed of the Ferrets again that night, waking still and silent and controlling his breathing that he wouldn't disturb Beka, sleeping on a pallet across the room.

 

The gods of the Hills always held that redemption was in the actions of one's hands. He had a lifetime's work still to go.


End file.
